What's happening January 2010

It's been a while since I've What's Happening'ed, I think I mentioned before that I am moving house; well, I've moved house. It has, and will continue to keep me busy for quite some time. But not so busy that I don't have a little bit of time for guitar :)

I recently did an arrangement of "Sunshine of Your Love", it came together pretty quick and not too bad. It's quite groovy to play, check it out on youtube. I say it's "quick and dirty" because that is all that I have time for - there are no embelishments - there is no solo, no bridge or break, it is just the guts of the verse and the chorus and that is it. I figure that I don't have time for all the fruit, and it is better to finish something to a point, than to never finish something at all. Maybe one day when I have ample time on my hands I will revist these things, and give them the proper embelishments they deserve.

Doing that song was an inspiration from seeing another guitarist play it on youtube (jazzguts), and that I had once attempted it without success. These days my arrangements are becoming a bit more formulaic, which is good and bad - good because it is easy, good because I'm starting to have a more distinct style, good because I'm enjoying myself...nup, can't think of anything bad! :)

Last Friday I had a bunch of mates over, and after a few amber muscle relaxants I invariably pull the guitar out and play some tunes. An old mate of mine, whenever this occurs, _always_ says " all you play is old stuff no-one can sing to, you should play some Def Leppard." Okay, so he's a Def Leppard 80's diehard, I've never held that against him, I can't talk I'm a 70's Pink Floyd tragic.

To be honest, many years ago I learnt the Def Leppard song "Hysteria". However it was a long time ago and it was a "normal learning of a song by a guitarist". This means you learn the main riffs, the solo, and maybe some chords - but it isn't an arrangement, it doesn't hold itself together, it's just pieces of a song you can play. One could almost say it is a waste of effort except that you need to do these things when you are young to get the years of playing that sort of stuff behind you.

So last night, I googled a tab for the song to re-aquainted myself with the chords and riffs and set about arranging it, to spite my mate th enext time he pipes up ;)

Straight up I recognised it's going to sound best in Drop D tuning, being very D-centric. The main riff is the hook into that song, but by itself just doesn't fill up the guitar - a song needs to be completely balanced throughout; you can't play a riff, then strum, then go back to the riff, it just sounds stilted; there is no fluidity and continuity. So I threw in a very basic bassline, just the chord root note 4 beats a bar to beef it up. It will be enough, considering I'm going to be playing the melody on top of the riff as well.

As with most things, the song is in chords, but the main verse/theme chords aren't a normal chord, Dropped D tuning helped a bit and playing it in the non-open position helped a bit as well. Once I had that sorted the melody basically played itself, all the melody notes were right there somewhere nearby. I was pleased :)

But now here's the rub - my missus was in the room at the time (and tolerating me playing the same thing over and over and over again) so I asked for some feedback.

I had isolated two ways of playing it, one was very classical/thumb independence, the first thing I nutted out, basically all the notes required, plucked individually. The second was in the style that is starting to become more of a signature in my arrangements; rather than just plucking out notes I flick downstroke across partial pieces of chords on the on-beat. To me it adds a nice percussive direction, rather than a bass-bass-bass-bass it is more like bass-snare-bass-snare; but at the same time it has the notes required. To me it adds a huge dimension to the sound of the arrangement, creates so many more subtleties to just the primary fundamental frequency of the note you are playing - and performing it is starting to come quite natural to me.

"I like the first one. The second sounds wishy-washing."

Arghh! How can you say that! It's the direction I'm heading, and you don't like it! (It's not the first time when asked she's always picked the non-JAW style version).

"It sounds like you are turning it into a country folk song or something. The first one accentuates the main feel and emotion of the song."

Now I'm just hurting ;)

So, here is the two versions of the signature riff. Unfortunately flicking the strings doesn't tab out well, I've gone with 045xxx meaning a light downstroke flick with your three fingers, basically each finger on each string, giving a slightly percussive sound but still striking the right note/chord in the riff:

Drop D tuning
E|-----------------|---------------|
B|-----------------|---------------|
G|-------0-------0-|-------0-------|
D|---4-------4-----|---4-------4---|
A|-5---5-------5---|-----5-------5-|
D|-0---0---0---0---|-0---0---0---0-|

E|---------------------|------------------|
B|---------------------|------------------|
G|-----0x--0-----0x--0-|-----0x--0-----0x-|
D|---4-4x------4-4x----|---4-4x------4-4x-|
A|-5---5x--------5x----|-----5x--------5x-|
D|-0---------0---------|-0---------0------|

So, to the 3 people who will read this blog entry, which one appeals more to you? :)
JAW

Tabs...are they good for you?

Tabs are like a bag of lollies. No, wait, tabs are like a bowl of rice. You couldn't live solely on bags of lollies, but you could live on bowls of rice - but a diet of rice alone is not a great diet.

But like lollies, tabs are fast, easy, instant gratification; they pep you up, make you happy and give you quick energy...but there is no real nutrition. Life doesn't have to be all about nutrition though does it? Can't we just enjoy ourselves from time to time?

The beginner guitarist is at a critical stage; I wouldn't like to put a number on it, but out of all the people who have said to me "I'd like to be able to play the guitar" and then I've shown them a few things, and push them in the right direction, lent them a guitar - so far zero have continued to pursue it. And no, I don't think it is me ;)

Playing guitar is a bit of a glamourous looking pursuit, to see a guitarist "rockin' out" looks like the most fun you could have standing up...but it represents *a lot* of practise, frustration and sweat to achieve that. So in the early days it is either immediate results - or a heck of a lot of persistence - that keeps the interest going. You need those immediate results to get past the initial hurdle.

That's where tabs come in. They are easy to learn (search wikipedia for "tablature", it's a good primer) - and tabs give you immediate results. The first thing a guitarist needs is be shown how to play the riff to "Smoke on the Water" or something really easy that they can suceed with and inspires them. Learn three chords and then be able play about a million songs. Hook them in with the easy stuff, then show them how to find tabs.

But tabs shouldn't last forever. Learning by ear, working things out by yourself, being able to sight read from music score, learning scales by rote, music theory, composing your own music - these sorts of things will round you out as a guitarist and musician.

Once you have the guitar bug for life, tabs in fact will start to feel tedious. I still refer to tabs as a reference or a starting point; however I now dislike rote learning a song from a tab. You are wondering why I generally tab out all my arrangements then aren't you? Quick answers: it's a tool for me to nut out and write down what I'm thinking during the arrangement process which often takes weeks of small increments - in fact sometimes I type stuff into powertab to see what it sounds like, before attempting to play it! - often I forget stuff if I haven't played it for a while but a quick glance at the tab gets me back on track - I like to share my stuff with the world and have people enjoy it, and then play it back to me with their own changes and twists that I never considered!

So yes, tabs are good for you, but everything in moderation - do something too much and it will stop being good for you. It's true of much in life.

JAW

Thumb Independence...huh?

Thumb independence; it is your key to "modern solo instrumental fingerstyle".

Okay, so you aren't into flatpicks, good for you :)  You have a fairly solid background in Classical style, even better!  You need to learn and master the following riff, an arrangement by Tommy Emmanuel from the Beatles song "Day Tripper".  Use right hand index and middle fingers on the top two strings, the thumb does all the bass line work.  If you don't yet have thumb independence then it will take you many hours over a few days to master - how can two bars be so hard? - you are about to make your brain work in a different way.  If you master it, then you don't need to read the rest of this blog, you will _understand_ thumb independence.

|-0---0---0---0---|-0---0----0----0---|
|-3---3---3---3---|-3---3----3----3---|
|-----------------|-------------------|
|-------------2p0-|-------4-------0h2-|
|-----------2-----|-----2-------2-----|
|-0-----3h4-------|-------------------|

Look; just the same as there is not really such a thing as muscle memory there is also not _really_ such a thing as thumb independence.  All you are doing is expanding your rhythm from a very basic one to more of a more complex polyrhythm style.

Normally as a classical player your thumb might play the first note in the bar and your fingers will then arpeggio or pattern pluck the rest of the bar, repeating for the next bar in a different chord.  Maybe there will be a second bass note, but essentially it is all on a regular beat.  It is when you thumb a bass note on an off beat you are performing "thumb independence".

Okay, I admit, true thumb independence _may_ exist.  As in, your thumb is doing something completely separate to your fingers.  An example would be playing the melody to Baa Baa Black Sheep with your fingers on the treble strings while thumbing the bassline of Peter Gunn at the same time.  Well no, that isn't really thumb independence you could train yourself to line up beats.  But if you played it through once; and then played it a second time but played the bassline *slower* than the melody - in fact you could play either the bassline or the treble at any speed relative to each other, chop and change sections out at will, then hallelujah, true thumb independence does exist and I will eat this blog.

Meantime, "thumb independence" will completely revolutionalise what you play and how you play, you just won't understand until you understand...understand?  This "thumb independence" I talk of is a learned polyrhythm; for example once you have mastered the above riff you now have a tool in your kit where you can strike an off beat bass note in a very specific situation.  Continue to learn more songs of that style and the more learned thumb independence patterns you will achieve.

Also - don't just consider thumb independence to be about the thumb, indeed the thumb might be playing a totally on beat pattern, your fingers may be playing the off beat!  Thumb independence simply means that what is happening on your fingers and thumb doesn't line up on a "normal"  beat.

My continuing strategy for achieving thumb independence is to very slowly bash into my brain a particularly tricky pattern, playing at ultra-slow tempo or even no-tempo, and force my fingers to learn the muscle memory required to perform the pattern.  Over time it will sink in and yet another thumb independence pattern is available in my toolkit.  It is very forced, difficult and almost unnatural; your thumb will tend to want to pick up on "normal" beats - indeed, it will fight with you.  Win the fight; and transform your sound from a very primitive western style rhythm to a creative and interesting polyrhythm!

JAW

What's happening October 2009

October turned out to be a busy month, and an un-busy month at the same time.  I had my busking permit, valid for a month, and I played three times in the Murray Street mall before I decided my guitar/amp combo just wasn't working out.  My battery amp was showing up problems - I reckon it needs a preamp between the effects pedal and the car audio amp, the sound was progressively getting boomier and "fuzzy" in the middle probably due to impedance mismatch.  The guitar was also showing up problems, the bass response was quite poor.

It was a really useful experience though; firstly it proved to me that I do in fact like playing to an audience, and that I have the ability to "muddle my way through" the songs I know (yep, there were plenty of errors, but you just play through).  The "stress test" on using my equipment in a gig scenario showed fundamental problems which I'm on my way to rectifying.

On the home made solar powered battery amp, even after all these years of effort, I decided to scrap it and just buy one from a manufacturer.  5 or 6 years ago when I started this project, you couldn't buy a battery amp, nobody was making them.  Today you can walk into a music store and test out several all made by different manufacturers, different price ranges, different features - and most cost less than my home made one and sounded better!

On the guitar side, I pulled off the saddle and made a new bone one.  Which made the pickup balance worse!  After trying several different things I decided to give the guitar to some experts and let the professionals fix it.  3 weeks later and it came back much better, but it still wasn't "perfect".  After the last year or so of experimenting with sound I know what I expect from a guitar pickup and amp, and now I want what I expect ;)  So I'm still working on it - after seeing what the professionals did and thinking about the physics of the situation I reckon I'm on the right track...

At the moment I'm selling one house and buying another, the big move in around 2 weeks.  I think a combination of that stress, and poor diet - my fingernails have gone weak, over the month I smashed up my thumbnail and middle finger on separate occasions, which for someone who plays on nails is really, really, really annoying.  So in between the guitar being in the shop and having short nails there wasn't much guitar playing the tail end of the month. (If I crack a nail, I will cut and file it down to the crack, and then cut and file all the others to the same level.  The only thing worse than cracking a nail is having the other fingers with long nails and one with a short nail!)

I think I've mentioned it but I have been jamming with a fantastic drummer on a Sat morning while our kids are in music classes.  I play my fingerstyle and he drums along to it.  He's got a real ear for the drums, once he's heard a song on the radio he pretty much knows the "feel" of the drumming in that song, so when I pull out a song he hasn't even heard for 10 years his drumming still sounds just like the original song!  He's more of an rocker-from-way-back than me; the stuff I play is a bit quieter than what he's used to, but he puts up with me.

Unfortunately with the house move, there is only two jam sessions left!  I'm very disappointed, it is the guitaring highlight of the week.  It has shown me that solo performances might be well and good, but when you are working with someone else it can be even better.  The chic who teaches our kids has had a listen to us before; in fact she is a singer, last week she came in while we were doing some pink floyd and it turns out she loves Dark Side of the Moon.  I cast out a challenge to her - brush up on "Great Gig in the Sky" and sing it for us next week...tomorrow!  A very challenging vocal solo, I'm looking forward to seeing how she goes.  I will record the session on the iphone, if it comes out alright I'll put some mp3s somewhere.

Finally, while we are on the subject, I have been putting a bit more effort into my Dark Side of the Moon project.  Once or twice a week I play Breathe-Time-Breathe Reprise-Great Gig in the Sky back to back, ie side A of the album minus "On the Run" which I don't even know if you could come up with anything on guitar.  Breathe & Breathe Reprise I have been playing for a few years now so they are done and dusted, in fact I've tarted up the bassline a bit so it sounds great.  Time I have a good resolve for the intro (not the alarm clocks though!) with some bongo drum playing on the body.  I haven't bothered with the solo yet; at the moment I've cut my DSotM project back to "just the basics", as the years go by I'll add to it - for now I think it is better to get stuff finished to a certain level rather than aim for 100% and never actually get there.  Great Gig in the Sky on the other hand needs to have a solo, it is the essence of the song, at the moment I am half improvising but I have the groundwork laid so sometime soon I will complete a near-enough rendition of the vocal solo and call it done.

In the meantime, when I've got the guitar pickup balanced and my nails have grown back somewhat, I think I'll record a video of DSotM side A for YouTube.  It will be rough and a bit unfinished, but I haven't posted anything for 3 months and my fan base is dropping! ;)

JAW

Pull that guitar in tight!

Yesterday I was talking to a mate who is learning the guitar, and I remembered to remind him to pull that axe in tight.  It's something that you don't hear enough about often enough.  In fact I think I spent the first 20 years playing without being told specifically; fortunately I was already doing it unbeknownst to me, so when I was told it made total sense.

Let me drill it into you for a moment, I consider it fundamental, and after this little read you can go away with an exercise to try and be informed up ready to pass on to other guitarists! ;)

...so why do you think it is the big burly fella struggle to grip out a bar chord for more than 30 seconds, and the little seven year old girl play them all day?  It because most of the pressure you need to adequately fret a note should *not* come from your hand, it should come from your arm and shoulder.

Look at that wimpy little thumb muscle in front of you.  Now look at that rippling biscep.  Which one would you rather you were using to apply pressure?

Basically if you were to fret notes only using the clamping force of your hand, you won't have much playing stamina.  If you pull the guitar in tight your left arm is the pulling force - your fingers are just forming the chord pattern - and your right arm is counterbalancing your left.

Not too sure what I'm talking about? Okay, here is the exercise. Form up a chord, whatever you want.  Now, take your thumb off the back of the neck.  What you'll find you need to do is what you should be doing - that is, pulling the guitar in and exerting all the fretting pressure with your arm.  You should be able to fret without buzz, in fact play any tune you know, without touching the neck with your left thumb.

Of course the thumb is important to guide, help with dexterity/fine motor skills/accuracy, offer a bit of structural support/grip/pressure and occassionally fret a bass note - but it isn't where the majority of the force comes from.  Playing a song without your thumb gives you an idea of where you should be applying pressure from, it's a bit of an eye opener if you've never tried it.

Good luck, and hopefully armed with this knowledge you will be able to play all day without getting fatigue in your thumb and fingers (if not at least pressure lines in your chest because you pressed the guitar so firmly into it!)

JAW

What's happening October 2009

...maybe one person who reads this may have seen me - I was busking at the Murray Street Mall, Perth Western Australia, Murray Street train station end, between about 12:15 and 13:00 WST 6 October 2009.  An interesting and positive experience.  A few quick notes, in no particular order:

• A kind little old lady smiled and dropped a $2 coin in as she passed by, midway through my first song.  Thank you - for the first coin I ever got from busking!;


• Lugging around a guitar and a heavy battery powered amp is not much fun, not to mention you feel a bit wierd doing so;


• Had the jitters for a while, playing was mediocre but solid enough, no terminal song stops but more dropped notes and even a few dropped phrases than I'd normally do;


• Was unable to get a sound I was happy with - the concrete pavers caused boominess in the bass and a weak treble.  It sounded _okay_ from where I was sitting, but a colleague of mine who stopped by told me the treble dropped quickly as you moved away, which is no good, the melody is in the treble.  This time I was more concerned with the "public performance" side of things, next time I'll try to improve the sound;


• The overall noise level in Murray Street Mall is higher than I expected.  I was pushing the boundaries of what I can achieve with the amp before getting feedback, volume wise.  There is plenty of oomphf left in the amp, the trick is to get it without feedback. Overall I think the volume was adequate so I'm not concerned, besides I have a feedback buster I can fit, I just don't really like using it;


• One guy recognised me from youtube and had a quick chat - g'day mate, thanks for letting me know (he loves my "Wish You Were Here", he just missed me playing it);


• Couple of guys hung around on the sidelines listening in for several songs; I'm used to that now, whenever I play in public I get that.  I figure they are all guitarists interested in how I play, they don't want to get too close, but they want to know what's going on.  If you are one of those sorts of guys - tell me what the story is!;


• A mummy and a little girl "go on, pop the money into the hat" - very sweet; my kids are all yawn ho-hum about guitar playing they see it all the time, but some kids would have never seen someone playing a guitar close up, so that's great!;


• After about 45 mins of playing the sun was on my head and I was only supposed to play for 30 mins before moving on (shhh) so I packed up; I wanted to play about another 5 or 6 songs, next time.  Grand total was $19.55.  Nearly paid for my busking pass in one hit ($23/month).

I'll do it again maybe later this week or next week, but long term I don't think it is for me - I'm fairly sure I'm a cafe/restaurant player.  I've got until 1st November on my busking pass, I'll get a few more in yet!

JAW

Trip to the Luthiers

My trip to the luthier proved very beneficial, but not for the reason I went there.

Some background: I was quite sure that my new(ish) nylon string guitar had bad intonation. You could tune for open fret, but when you played a note it always sounded sharp. The harmonic didn't seem to match the 12th fret. I've always thought I had pretty bad pitch detection, so I lived with it, but increasingly it became more annoying, especially when I played from a capo. So, I lined up a local luthier to have a look at it.

The luthier is Paul Sheridan, who makes about 10 guitars a year, mostly for overseas buyers. Fantastic guitars, lets come back to that in a moment.

He slings my guitar up on his bench, and immediately begins checking - with ruler and magnifying glass to verify the frets are correctly spaced, and then with a tuner to check frequencies. I was suprised that he wasn't using a stroboscopic tuner, "Yeah I've always meant to buy one, and I've been through about four of these (Korg analogue needle variant) so I could have paid for one by now." Basically, the guitar was pretty good up to the 12th, it starts getting a little bit messy after there.

"If you've got a really good ear you'll hear it, but otherwise it's pretty good."

What? I've always thought my ear was really bad. "If you've been playing for a long while, your ear will improve, you might start to be able to hear the discrepancies." One thing I mentioned was that I do tend to pull on the strings when fretting, which he noticed while I was playing some stuff later on.  "You should watch that". Basically "no fault found", operator error ;)

While I was there I got him to show me some of his guitars. He builds them all out of Australian woods, and has moved to a "lattice brace" on the sound board, basically a grid pattern instead of the traditional fanned bracing. When I played his personal guitar, immediately it has so much sound and body, it was just beautiful. While he continued to work I must have spent 3/4 of an hour just playing it and enjoying it. He didn't seem to mind, we talked about the sounds (describing different sound qualities is as hard as describing the different tastes of red wine) - and talked about all sorts of other things.

Turns out he doesn't play the guitar much - but is starting to get back into it. He also seemed at a bit of a life-juncture; wasn't getting as much joy as he used to from his work. I had to remind him once or twice during our conversation "You're living the dream!"

He was intrigued with my playing style; well at least I thought he was, maybe he was just being polite ;) We talked about arranging fingerstyle songs, and the classical guitarists he builds guitars for, talked about guitars, and life in general.

He pulled out another guitar, one that he had built with a traditional fan braced soundboard.  I played it for a while then apologised profusely "I like this one better!"  I am a bit of a boring taditionalist, but what is comes down to is what sound you want.  I like a crisp brightness over mellow warmth.  Pauls lattice style gives that warmth - and huge volume and projection - whereas my little Japanese styled guitar is crisp and bright with low volume and projection, but the pickups and amplification make up for it, which is what I wanted to achieve.

I've come to realise that in the nylon guitar scene there seems to be two types, Japanese style and European style.  I know this is a gross over generalisation, but at a very simple level when you play a guitar it is either full of warmth and body (European style) or crisp and bright (Japanese style) or neither (look for another guitar ;))  Volume, projection, ease of play all come into it, but on purely a sound point of view there are the two basic characteristics, and you can't have both, they are opposite types of sounds.

So I wasted about two hours of Paul's time playing his wonderful guitars and talking his ear off (I love to talk about guitars and playing them, hence the reason this blog exists).  I came away with a bit of new clarity about what I should be expecting from a guitar, and the realisation that the "problems" with my guitar were actually problems with me.  Thanks Paul.

Even better was him walking me through the construciton of his guitars - all his milling and machining gear, how he forms each part, his use of carbon fibre (?!), his special humidity controlled room for drying and seasoning; basically all the hands on side of guitars.  Fantastic!  I must build myself a guitar or two at some stage in my life ;)

...and probably the biggest tip I got from Paul, when I asked him how I will know when I find the right guitar for me - "It's like falling in love with a woman, you'll just know."

JAW